KEY POINTS:
Zoe Donald has a confession to make.
"I don't know that much about environmental stuff and global warming. I kind of understand it, but it's not really what I'm interested in."
The 14-year-old may be carrying the legacy of her late father, highly respected Green Party co-leader Rod Donald, as she prepares to go to Parliament next month as a Youth MP.
But she's her own woman.
She says "Dad wasn't as much of a greenie as everyone assumed he would be. We lived a pretty normal life. We recycle and we do all that kind of stuff, but we don't do anything real extreme.
"Me, my mum and my sisters would just be the opposite to a hippy commune."
Zoe may be her own person, but the articulate teen still loves the idea of being known as Rod Donald's daughter. "I understand one day I will get a bit sick of it, but at the moment it's quite nice. Especially at Parliament ... I need to be Rod Donald's daughter because otherwise I don't think I could handle it.
"I know that sounds really weird ... but I feel a lot safer when I'm in a situation like that and people know about it."
All eyes will be on Zoe when she takes the seat next to the chair formerly occupied by her father, alongside 120 other teenagers replicating the work of members of Parliament. Zoe has been a frequent visitor to the Beehive over the years with her father.
"I think it will be really nice - it can be my thing with Dad while I'm up there. I don't really have that at the moment. Because where he's buried, I don't feel anything with it. It's not really him."
Zoe was approached by her father's long-time Greens colleague, Jeanette Fitzsimons, to take up the Youth MP role.
"I am going to find it quite hard when I'm up there, because I'm going to miss [Dad] a lot. If he was still alive ... it would have been one of those things he would have helped me with."
While politics took up so much of her dad's life, Zoe holds no grudge.
"Dad being a politician made my life amazing. I got to go up to Wellington and walk in Parliament. And we got to go to the Koru Lounge when we'd fly, and people knew who Dad was when we were walking down the street."
"I just knew how much [being a politician] meant to him. I knew he wouldn't miss my birthdays, he wouldn't do this stuff if it didn't mean that much to him. It made him who he was."
Ms Fitzsimons said Zoe had earned the Youth MP spot in her own right, but it was satisfying to give something back to her when Parliament took her father away so much.
